OUAN503 - Collaborative, Final Idea

As this was the first time we had collaborated across courses, it became apparent to me how important it was to make time as a group to organise sessions where we can get together and speak in person regarding our ideas and progress through the project. After having a couple of sessions together and attempting to collect the samples of voice recordings to continue with our initial idea of having children narrate the story, we had a timetabled responsive session. During the responsive session we were given some important information and asked if we had any questions regarding the hand in dates or anything surrounding the D&AD or YCN briefs. Following on from this we had the rest of the session to go away and work on what we liked in relation to the responsive module, so we took the time to get together in our group and finalise our idea.

To me personally and I'm sure everyone else in the group, it was important that we had an idea solidified and ready to be worked on from this point forward because we were already in the middle of February and hadn't begun the production or even the pre-production stages of the three 20 second animations we had planned to create. I believe this was simply due to the difficulties in communication and the struggle of implementing the first idea we had made it so we were behind on our project in terms or progress. I suggested that we pick one of our other ideas, the one we liked the most and went with that. The benefit of using one of our other ideas is that we weren't relying on any outside sources for the material, and we could essentially get on with our brief. It was unfortunate but I think it was important that at this point we cut our losses with the time we had spent, and I think we all agreed on that. The idea we chose to pursue was integrating different cultures and showing the parallels between them across the three animations we had to make. Initially we thought this was a strong idea because of the possibilities in terms of narrative, meaning it could accommodate the storyarch element of the brief. Furthermore, the culture aspect and the way in which certain areas of the world live is a nice take on the everyday storytelling element that was required by the brief. My thinking in regards to this was that across the world people endure very different 'everyday lives' and it would be interesting to attempt to portray this idea across our three stories. The process for coming up with the narratives was fairly straight forward and everyone pitched in with suggestions about the storytelling itself. We chose three contrasting storyarchs that we liked the most and that we thought could work well given the context of our themes. The storyarchs that we were most interested in were; The Quest, Rags to Riches and Overcoming the Monster. Afterwards we chose three locations from around the world and thought about the food culture in each one of them, bearing in mind the idea of contrast lives represented through food we came up with Paris, France; Hong Kong and the US.

With a month left we made a conscious decision to make sure we had an outline for our narratives that we could all then take away and start working on. Once we had a simple story outline as a group and individually we could begin creating storyboards and planning the individual animations so that we can start production as soon as possible. The story set in the US came quite naturally to us, and we thought it would be fun to show a competitive eater undertaking a food challenge - this fit quite nicely under the 'Overcoming the Monster' storyarch in which the food challenge takes the place of the monster, in quite a humorous way, and the main character behaves like the hero that has to overcome the challenge. During this section of the brief I felt that the process of creating stories which could be told like this in just 20 seconds, especially with the storyarch aspect would be difficult, and in reflection it was a really difficult task to make sure there was a solid story that was being well communicated in a concise and entertaining way. This aspect of the brief was definitely a learning curve for me and taught me a lot about storytelling as a whole. Often I hear stories from now successful chefs that Paris is the place to be to learn culinary skills and it's where a lot of people go to learn their craft. The 'Rags to Riches' story felt like a natural fit with the food culture in Paris, with the case often being you work your way up from the bottom when entering a kitchen job for the first time. As a group we liked the idea of showing within the 20 second time frame the evolution of a pot wash or assistant in a bakery working his way up the ladder, so the idea here was established. I think the most difficult storyarch to satisfy was 'The Quest', because it's quite a hard task to tie this in with food. We decided it could still work if we were a little more abstract and the storyarch didn't have to dictate the story so literally if it didn't work. We discussed the idea of depicting the journey of food in a market to table type of scenario. Where we show each part of the process from when fresh food is sitting in a market, to being served in a restaurant.

It was a good feeling to finally have an idea we could work on as a group. We talked about the process of pre-production, production and post-production and distributed roles and specific scenes that people were going to draw, colour and animate. The first job however was story boarding, and planning the visual representation of the story through characters, use of camera and action. So we gave ourselves around three days to produce these and meet up again. From this point on we have to work quite efficiently so that the D&AD deadline is met.

OUAN503 - Collaborative, Idea Generation

Once our group was established we went away and decided to think of some initial ideas that could potentially fuel the story that would be told in our final piece. I came up with the idea to interview children about everyday things and everyday scenarios that they may find themselves in. My thinking was that it gives a completely new perspective on certain everyday occurrences like attending school for example. Furthermore, the inquisitive and imaginative mind of a child may find the everyday events that we all take for granted inspiring or see certain things in a more fresh and original way. Alternatively, as the requirements of the brief suggest, more like a quest or an adventure. We had our first meeting as a group a few days after we formed on the 19th January to discuss our ideas and really discuss the roles of each other within the project. We decided that we could contribute quite evenly across different areas of the project, and that I would do the majority of the animating whereas the other to do most of the illustration in order to make it so we work to our strengths. By doing this we can work efficiently and hopefully complete the project to a high standard.

From here we picked some of the story arches we liked the sound of such as 'quest', 'voyage and return' and 'overcoming the monster' because these were quite similar in nature and quite broad in what we could apply them too. They also coincided quite well with out idea to interview children and create a quest like piece regarding their interpretation of every day life as essentially a new adventure. When we were coming up with initial ideas I was trying to keep in mind that the limit for the short moving images was between 10 and 20 seconds long. Furthermore they had to work as a type of set, but also be good as stand along pieces, which was another obstacle in terms of the story and how we were going to present it. The brief did mention not being too literally however, which was a positive in the sense that we could take the concept of the story arch and use it on a broader scale when it came to generating ideas.

Below is a sample of the document containing the information and questions Ian sent out to his friends, using this they could then ask and record their children replying to the questions listed for us to use. Ian and I made some mind maps of various ideas in order to see if anything stuck out as being particularly good or relevant to the brief that we could use. When trying to come up with ideas, we weren't trying to make sure the narratives abided by as many of the requirements as possible. We wrote down the first idea that we had come up with which was the concept of interviewing children using specific questions based around the themes of quests, adventures and 'overcoming the monster' whilst also trying to relate it to everyday life in the hope that we could get something we could potentially use to fuel a narrative. As we starting thinking of more ideas, I came up with the idea of looking at three parallel days in the lives of three different people from contrasting cultures around the world. This could entail looking at three people who do a similar job and have a similar profile, but through the different films we would produce, show the differences in their lifestyle because of where they live and what they do. The aspect of a story arch would have to fit in somewhere but I think this would be relatively easy. The first that came to mind were perhaps a job such as a shopkeeper or a chef, in say Hong Kong, North America and South America. That way we could show the different levels of stress they have during their job, or perhaps 'overcoming the monster' could be the hard work and long hours they put in. I think visually it would also be good because you could show things like different cuisine and clothing, or buildings and all types of contrasts within the culture as a reference to the everyday lives of people, not necessary living the same way I or many others do. Another idea similar to the one about interviewing children was on the other end of the spectrum, in that we could interview older people about their lives, and we could animate a day in their life when they were a child looking back. However, we soon realised this wouldn't meet the brief requirements in in the sense that it wouldn't be set in modern day and wouldn't represent a modern, everyday situation. Next we thought we could have an everyday scenario or situation playing out from three different perspectives of three different parties involves in the event. The example we thought of that could work would be a crime, so you would have the crime playing out form the perspective of the criminal, a bystander and the police or a victim. I thought this would be an interesting take on the everyday aspect whilst also looking at the way people view certain actions. Alternatively it could be a story of misinterpretation of events, where at the end the truth is revealed and the scene and event were not as straight forward as it first seemed to the audience at first glance. The final idea we had was to shop three segments from someones life as they're growing up. So, a moment in the life of a child at school, then a young adult then as an older person. Each of these different segments could then have one for the story aches as a theme. We did have some more less developed ideas too such as representing some of the story archs in a more sinister, non-obvious way, such as addiction relating to the idea of 'overcoming the monster'. I think at this point we have a lot of potential ideas, we just need to choose one to really develop further and start working on. Hopefully, by our next meeting we will have decided which route to take and we can make some good progress after this.

Ian did in fact manage to collect a few samples of questions from two different sets of children he knows that were really good in terms of what they were saying. At this stage we're still thinking of a way to approach the recordings and how to use them in the project. One idea we had, because it wouldn't quite work as a narration is to have a certain section of the recording quoted at the beginning of the animation and then base the narration and subject matter around the quote.



On the 4th February we had a peer review. During the peer review we got into small groups of varying size depending on the size of the table but I was in a group of around five. We each took it in turns to go through our ideas for our collaborative briefs and discuss our progress so far whilst also gathering feedback that we could apply to the progression of the brief. At this point it was around two weeks after we had formed our groups and began the brief so I think it was fair to say that everyone was in a similar position of still trying to come up with an idea. The general consensus seemed to be, at least with the group I was in, that people were trying to come up an idea and that ultimately once they had an idea they liked they were going to run with it. From this experience so far I can say that this is probably the hardest part of the project, working with other people to come up with an idea that everyone agrees to and likes is quite difficult, especially in a short amount of time.

OUAN503 - Collaborative, Research

Early on in the project I decided to look into some aspects of the brief that would come into practice later on. By doing research into colour, shapes and references in terms of art style it meant I and the rest of the group would be prepared when it came to the production stage. I created several research boards before we had started creating any physical work that reflected my ideas on colour and colour samples that could be employed. Something I also wanted to do at this early stage is look at imagery that represented some of the arch types that we were looking at pursuing for the brief. To do this I made a type of mood board that contained 'epic' and 'adventure' driven images that could potentially fuel some of our ideas. It's quite a literal approach to the brief, but I think it's good sometimes to have a starting point than nothing at all. In addition to these I've looked at art styles within certain media that I have seen or engaged with in the past. I specifically looked at the game 'Journey' a game where from a visual stand point displays a simplistic but atmospheric art style, and in my opinion a great use of colour and lighting.

The images for these boards were sourced online, and mostly from Pinterest. I've found Pinterest to be a great tool when trying to source images because it pulls images sourced from all over. It also allows you to collect them within the site by 'pinning' them to boards, a great way to organise found photographs and references. Something that I liked a lot about the way images are found using Pinterest is that by searching for something like colour or colour palettes you won't simply get a normal palette and it can come in a variety of forms. For example some of the colour palettes came as dyed material, as paint or as tiles.

In the early stages of the project creating image boards like this encouraged me to think about potential ideas and development in a more visual way instead of a theoretical way. Through the development of different aspects that could later become elements within the animation we create, so colour, particular imagery or art styles it means that we have a starting point as a group. When I first read over the brief and saw the section on arch types and what they mean traditionally in fairytales and those kind of narratives I began to think in quite a narrow minded way towards the arch types and what they can represent. By collecting imagery under these arch types it allowed me to broaden the way I saw the simple story lines and think less literally about the stories that could be found within the archetype 'guidelines'.

OUAN503 - Introduction to Collaborative

This was the start of the collaborative section of the responsive module. After christmas we were given the task to create several slides about ourselves and our work as a way of pitching ourselves to the people on illustration and graphic design. The purpose of this was so that people could contact us if they liked our working style and then collaborate. The first of the three slides had to have our name and email address on it so that we could be easily contacted, also with four images of our work that we thought represented what we did best. I tried to include as much diversity as possible on this slide, taking things from various briefs so that it demonstrated the different ways I had worked and hopefully appealed to a wider group of people. The second slide had to include four images of professionals work that we admired and so I chose four different artists that had influenced me throughout the time I've spent discovering artists. The final slide was simply the briefs we were interested in working on so that if people across different courses shared a desire to work on a brief then they were able to work with individuals through that means. My slides are shown below. I chose work from my final title sequence project form last year as well as images from the most recent project as that was in my mind quite fresh and some of the best work I've done in the past year. The artists I chose to show included, animator, Makoto Shinkai and artists, Daniel Dociu, Chris Sasaki and Jon McNaught. I also tried to make the images as big as possible without making it look overcrowded, simply so that it was clearly visible for the brief period it was on the screen during the presentation (about 5 seconds per slide).



Following on from the presentation of our slides we moved from the lecture theatre to the cafe area where there were tables set up for the different briefs. The idea was to go to the table with the brief of our choice on and discuss our ideas and hopefully find people to collaborate with on this project through this. I sat down with around seven other people and realised that they were nearly all illustrators. We spoke a little about the brief and what we liked about it before splitting into two groups, a group of four and a group of three. I'm working with three illustrators; Tilly, Ian and Chay. Overall, I don't think the slides had the effect they wanted to in terms of allowing people to find people to work with. From what I could tell a lot of people simply went to the table with the brief they most wanted to work on and found people there. It was quite difficult to take any names down or have a good look at the work displayed on the presentations because it was moving so quickly.

Once our group had been established we created a group chat that we could communicate in and exchange ideas within. I went away and the weekend following the week our groups had been established I started attempting to generate ideas. My worry with this particular brief is that the deadline is quite close, at around the middle of March and we're already approaching the middle of January. I trust that we will be okay in terms of organisation and having produced something that we're happy with, but it does add pressure to the situation in that we don't have a large amount of time.

OUAN503 - Secret 7" - Brief Summary

Throughout this selected brief I set out to create seven individual designs using a range of refined, experimental methods and techniques to push myself in an area of design and illustration I feel like I've lost touch with. I saw the Secret 7" brief as a good opportunity to explore different media and use imaginative ways to solve a problem in the form of a competition brief, and I believe I have achieved the level of exploration and refinement that I wanted to quite well.

As a brief I think it was suitable for approaching the design and illustration avenue with a huge amount of scope to the point where there were very few limitations on the kind of work we were asked to produce, with the only real limitation being the dimensions of the piece. The breadth of opportunities that were available to be taken advantage of due to the open interpretation of the tracks allowed me to focus on my practice a lot, and in turn I think the skills I've learnt throughout the process will filter into my design work as well as providing new windows of exploration in the future. The range of different responses is evident in the artists I used as inspiration, and also in the visuals present on the finished record sleeves. The time frame for me to complete this brief was around ten days because I started to work towards the competition deadline quite late in the competition timeline, however I think this was a reasonable time to complete the brief with around a day and a half dedicated to each design. Of course my work would have been different and possibly more refined if I had dedicated more time to it, or even done less designs. But my main focus was to gather a range of responses and ultimately experiment - so the refinement was less important to me. Perhaps the shorter timescale that I gave myself to complete all seven tracks for the brief pressured me into working more efficiently and running with ideas instead of pondering on designs which is something I've considered as a bad habit of mine in the past. The challenge for me in this brief was designing with the limitations of the title track and the dimensions of the record sleeve. I haven't had this kind of restrictions of my design and illustration work in the past because it's either been early production work - where there is no rules - or it's been personal work that I have undertaken in my own time. Another challenge was working at a pace where the work was consistently being turned out. For example, there was a day and a half of work time allocated per record sleeve, and if I ran over this time then the time allocated for the next design would suffer and have to be reduced in order to accommodate the deadline. The presentation format was relatively simple, there were a few complications regarding the colour mode at the beginning of the brief when I made a mistake and set the Photoshop file up to RGB instead of CMYK. However, this problem was resolved fairly quickly and I made sure not to repeat the same mistake.

As a whole the Secret 7" was a good mixture of an open brief but still working under certain requirements. I was able to further my practice in a big way by using new techniques and revisiting certain mediums that I hadn't used in a while. In addition it made me work to a certain pace that it was vital to maintain or better and I think my approach to deadlines and managing work has improved over a short time period because of it. Overall, I'm quite pleased with the level of illustrations I was able to create, and the amount I was able to learn. I certainly think there are areas that could be improved and ideas that I should have gone with in reflection, but I'm happy with what was achieved nonetheless.

OUAN503 - Secret 7" - The Jam, Art School

Of the seven sleeves that were available to work on this was the last of the seven I attempted. I decided to do something relatively simple and straight forward as the deadline for the brief was getting worryingly close. I was hoping that a simple straight forward idea would do well as oppose to the large amounts of thinking and research I've been putting into some the others.

I had the initial idea of illustrating something recognisable as something a school child would do, such as a playground game or a paper aeroplane for example. Stemming from this I decided to do a paper boat floating on the surface of a river with some ripples as if it was being blown across the water. This design was actually the quickest one to do as like I said I wanted it to be simple and straight forward. I did spend some time however painting the paper boat as it was difficult to capture the shadows on the paper, a challenge but I think I got there in the end and the illusion of light and shadows on the paper boat worked quite well in the end. I think what made it work visually was being quite subtle with the colour change between light and shadow. Furthermore, I haven't really had the opportunity or chance to paint a reflection digitally before so this was a small challenge for me, although I essentially used the same technique as painting shadows and playing with opacity. In hindsight I wish I had given it a ripple effect to compliment the painted water ripples and I think that would have added a lot to the image in terms of attention to detail and the physicality of certain details. The colour scheme came fairly naturally, the final image in my opinion would have benefited from an even greener tint though, in order to convey the typical green algae covered pond water. Thinking about this now, it would have been fun to add surface algae and lily pads in the actual image as the area around the paper boat. When creating this image I really enjoyed painting the ripples and experimenting with the different brushes, some softer edged brushes and some harder round brushes. The combination of the two gave for quite an interesting effect and after a couple of attempts I managed to paint them to a point I was happy with. Another hard aspect of this was painting the ripples in the correct plane so that they were parallel with the surface of the water and the bottom of the paper boat. It was easy to spot when everything was drawn in the correct plane, and I was quite happy with the effects. Textures were quite important in this image too, however I think more textures could have been added in order to improve the visual appeal of the water. After this, I made the decision not to over complicate the image, especially with textures that could look out of place if various areas of the image were of a lot higher detail than others.

After I had completed this design I had a full set of seven images to submit to the competition brief. I showed the designs to some friends and I was surprised at the ones they liked but I suppose in a way it's good that the majority of my designs have some redeeming qualities that people like and can engage with. I was quite happy with this design despite how simple it was and think it was a good exercise in working quickly and other technical aspects of drawing and illustration as a whole.

The Jam - Art School

OUAN503 - Secret 7" - John Lennon, Imagine

In my mind the words 'Imagine' and 'Dream' had similar connotations, so when I read these track titles I was immediately away I didn't want to repeat a similar design for both of them. Not necessarily form an idea perspective but definitely form a visual stand point. I wanted to include an element of fantasy in this sleeve, the idea I had was to have a child fishing in a pond contained within a forest environment. I feel like forests have a natural feeling of enchantment to them, especially in the context of a fantastical world with fantasy elements included.

The design started off as two separate components, as I wanted quite sure about the composition or how the character was going to fit into the environment itself. Again, this was a combination of a traditional effort using pencil and marker, with Photoshop to again refine the image and add colour with lighting that suits the theme and give the image the element of fantasy that it would be missing at this stage. Once the character was drawn, I created a square in my sketchbook before using reference photographs to draw a rough forest environment. I went round the details of the environment using a blank marker, giving the image definition that when scanned in would be easy to work over with the crisp black lines, as oppose to rough pencil marks that would have been harder to work with. After this I used the multiply blending option on a layer above the drawing to add colour. The colours were fairly realistic but I made sure to keep it a relatively dull colour scheme, of dark greens and blues. This gave the image a darker more serious tone as oppose to using light greens which wouldn't have worked as well, and made the image look less serious in its appearance. The character was then coloured and scanned in the same way that the environment was and placed into the scene. I resized the character so his fishing rod fit nicely into the image. The final stage was the colour correction stage where reds were over laid in order to create a certain ambience. I had an idea at this stage to add fireflies as if they were hovering over the pond that was being fished in, this was made easier by combining Photoshop brushes and overlaying photographs of embers and fire. This brought the image up to a finished stage.

Overall, this image worked okay in terms of representing the fantasy elements that I wanted it to. In terms of the drawing style however, it isn't a style that I would normally draw in and ultimately it felt a bit off for me. I liked the way the colours worked out in the end but I think I would have spent more time on it if I had more time making sure it was more realistic and detailed. I also would have added in an art nouveau style possibly, because I think the fantastical elements would have worked well in this historical art style.

John Lennon - Imagine

OUAN503 - Secret 7" - Tame Impala, The Less I Know The Better

This record sleeve for Tame Impala's song 'The Less I Know the Better' was one of the most fun to make because the process to make it was a lot different from the others. It essentially involved a combination of photography and digital techniques to create the final image with a little bit of experimentation and colour correction. As well as this I had looked closely at the kind of work that was produced by and for the band themselves, not that the brief required you to stay within the themes of the band but I did was to be somewhat reflective of the band's style. Due to the band's approach to music videos and record covers I looked into patterns and other kinds of 'experimental' visuals, all that could contribute to the strength of the final record sleeve image that I was creating.

The initial concept I had thought up was going to be either successful or not work at all. I wasn't sure whether it would work or not because I had never attempted anything like this before. The idea included the use of a person or people and a close up shot of their face or faces before illustrating patterns and diagrams over the top. I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep the drawings contained within the area of the face or all of the sleeve until I started. The idea developed further as the imagery came together and I had the photograph I was going to be working with. Eventually as I started working into the photograph I decided to create a mask and work into that specifically so I had other areas on the image to create patterns and experiment with different shapes. The technique used to achieve the final image was that the black mask was painted in Photoshop and made to fit better using the opacity tool and the 'multiply' blending option. After this shapes were erased from the layer featuring the mask so the shapes revealed the face underneath. I wanted everything to be as neat an organised as possible so it took a few ours of trial and error regarding the shapes that were removed until it looked relatively clean and I was happy with the way it looked. Once this was complete it was simply a case of adjusting the colours so the image meshed a bit better and everything complimented each other. I used the tablet pen to go back and forth horizontally on the canvas with a thick brush and this created a kind of choppy segmented effect that was then blended using one of the layer blending options over the top. This came after several attempts at creating interesting shapes over the top of the photograph. Finally, I thought the image required some form of framing so I took a speckled brush with a very small pixel width and created a triangle shape by duplicating it multiples times and arranging it. This eventually led to the triangular boarder that can be seen in the final image.

In summary this image was the most experimental I had done up to this point in the brief, although I was trying quite a few techniques this was the first time I had worked in this particular way and I think overall it was quite successful. I enjoyed having a strong starting point for the image rather than a blank canvas. In addition it allowed me to look at lighting and other settings in combination with the lens type when taking the photograph. I haven't used much photography in my work recently other than for research purposes so it was equally refreshing in this sense and enjoyable at the same time. I think this technique of working on top of photographs could be applied to a range of other illustration and design work so I shall definitely try to keep it in my inventory for tackling certain design problems in the future.

Tame Impala - The Less I Know The Better

OUAN503 - Secret 7" - Max Richter, Dream 3

I would say for me personally, this record sleeve, Dream 3 by Max Richter and Imagine by John Lennon were the two that I had the most ideas for initially. I believe this is due to the titles being representative of the work I'm most used to producing and the work I view and enjoy most. This includes surrealism, dark imagery, ambiguous themes and a general sense of dream like scenarios or imagined worlds. Despite having a lot of ideas, it also makes things difficult because nailing down a specific idea becomes that much harder due to the difference within them and the various conflicting elements. In contrast to the others I wanted the Dream 3 record sleeve to be a little more literal, by depicting someone thinking about or fulfilling their dream. Not necessarily in a direct way but a more suggestive way. During the time that I was attempting the Secret 7" competition and treating it like a brief, I was looking at a lot of photography of the Milky Way that people had taken from remote locations in locations such as Scandinavia or Kazakhstan. They go out to these locations and camp out under a sky unaffected by light pollution before taking incredible long exposure photographs of the Milky Way as it can be seen from Earth. This is the kind of imagery that provided me with the inspiration to then in turn illustrate someone camped out, exploring and star gazing.



The final image took advantage of all of the bright and seemingly unnatural colours that are often seen in these kind of photographs. From bright greens and blues to purples, pinks and reds that are caused by various properties of the atmosphere and it's interaction with light. The narrative I wanted to communicate with this image was that the character shown is heavily invested in the idea of exploring, not just Earth but beyond that too. I swapped out an image of stars and the Milky Way that is shown in the photographs that inspired me, and replaced it with a rocket launch. The idea of this was heavily influenced by the work of Makoto Shinkai, a Japanese animator and director that often uses shuttle launches and contrails with huge open skies and sunsets within his work. In a way this was a homage to this particular motif that he repeatedly uses that to me has always communicated the idea of dreams and ambition. Partly because of the efforts and drive that it takes by a huge number of collaborators and individuals to achieve such a feat, but the idea of exploration beyond our own planet shows drive and longing to discover, which was the underlying message of the image I was trying to create whilst tying it back to the theme of dreams and the title of the record. From the title itself in my mind there was two avenues of interpretation of the world dream that I wanted to consider representing visually for this particular sleeve. That is the surrealism and unknown nature of dreams and what we know about them. Or, the idea of a personal goal or 'dream'. When it came to actually producing the visuals for the record sleeve this probably took the longest because I spent a lot of time trying to perfect the tone of the image in a way that I wanted it to be provoking in an emotional sense, and certainly relatable. Furthermore, quite some time was spent trying to establish a style and an approach that would be able to convey the visual message and themes that I wanted to express. The styles itself was inspired by artist Jon McNaught for his use of colour, shape and storytelling ability. Despite the relative simplicity of his work I absolutely love the way he manages to convey ideas about light simply through combining certain colours and gradients. Shadows play a big part in his work I also feel, adding a very dramatic element and complimenting his ability to describe times of day to the observer visually simply by the size or length of a shadow. I attempted this simple but effective technique in this particular image, hoping it would do what I've seen him do in a lot of his work and add a real sense of feeling and wonder. The image was made entirely digitally using my knowledge of colours and experimenting with layers with some constant adjustment until the right lighting was achieved. Furthermore, textures became an important aspect to the image in my opinion because they added character and depth to the image that otherwise wasn't there, making it seem like it was made from paper.

Artist that inspired this piece; Jon McNaught



Overall, I enjoyed making this image - drawing influence from film makers and auteurs like Makoto Shinkai in combination with artists like Jon McNaught. This record sleeve has emerged as probably my favourite of the seven that I have and plan to create. For me, it captured what I set out to do as an idea most closely and although I wasn't able to experiment that much I learnt a lot making it about how certain elements such as shadows can play a big part in an image. Finally, I think with more effort funnelled into this image alone as oppose to having to create seven quite close together, I think it could have had some other relatable and atmospheric qualities worked into it, but I'm happy with the end result despite this.

Max Richter - Dream 3

OUAN503 - Secret 7" - Etta James, At Last

For the Etta James record sleeve I dug a little deeper in order to find an interesting idea for some imagery that would work well on a record sleeve. I looked at some information about Etta James herself, and thought that the information I found about her being born in Los Angeles, and the decade that this particular track was released called for some artwork based around those facts. My first instinct was to produce an interpretation of the landscape during that decade in the 60's, with the cars from that decade and other artefacts. Another idea I had was to have a woman waiting at an airport with her luggage, and a taxi arriving to pick her up. This is quite a literal interpretation of title, but still carries an interesting story with it. Making the audience ask questions; who is she waiting for? Where is she going?

This piece essentially started as another exploration of media, specifically gouache. I chose to look into some 1960's photographs of Los Angeles and the types of buildings and transport and environments that were apparent of the time, before starting to paint a car. I feel like the type of car I ended painting is quite reflective of the time. It was also quite refreshing for me to use more traditional media to create this piece. The original piece was a lot larger than just the car on its own, and was of a whole scene. However, I soon began to realise that this wouldn't have worked quite so well as a record sleeve because it felt too detached, and by this I mean lack of focus. It felt to vague and disconnected from the purpose that I was trying to use it for and so I honed in on a small portion of the image and refined it slightly as a centre piece for the final image. I have used the combination of digital and traditional media since I began creating images of this nature and used it again once it was scanned in to retouch the colours and levels in the image. As well as this, small adjustments were made such as creating the effect of the headlights glowing which I think brought a lot to the image as a whole. Furthermore, it allowed me to add a horizon line and some clouds to give the scene a sense of placement as oppose to simply being a car. I think its these small touches that bring the image up from what it was to something a lot better. Overall, this image was another attempt to try something new not just in the use of media and physical approach to the task but also looking into the idea and the philosophy behind the design. Also trying to create intelligent work and interesting design with thought and fuelled by research as oppose to simply illustrating the title of the track like I mentioned with the other record sleeves I've illustrated so far. Ultimately it was quite a fun and challenging record sleeve to make and it was fun to use gouache paint again to create something with, it has made me want to continue using it for other pieces of work. I specifically like gouache because of its diversity as a tool. It can be layered onto a canvas thicker like acrylic or oil paint but also watered down to behave like watercolour, for example. It's diversity was something that made me glad I revisited it, and perhaps I'll use it for other briefs where I can, and if not for more of the designs in this brief. One of the most satisfying stages in the design process for me, usually comes at the end. It's not the most challenging or mentally taxing by any means but I enjoy the section of time at the end that is dedicated to balancing the colours, and essentially finalising and aspects of the images that are subject to change. It's especially enjoyable because it takes a small amount of time and effort to improve areas of the image that can bring it up to another standard. This is something I tried quite a lot with this image. Since it was painted traditionally there were changes that were made in terms of the way the colours looked on screen from the scanning process that made me want to revisit it and change it slightly. The final thing I did, which I'm still unsure about was add some noise to the image to break up the colour and give it a grain as if it was painted on a textured surface, or even that of an old film photograph. These did add a certain element of authenticity to the image now it looked more dated, and in tune with the 60's era it was portraying.

Etta James - At Last

OUAN503 - Secret 7" - Jack Garrett, Worry

This was the second track that I designed a record sleeve for to enter the Secret 7" competition. Looking back I think this was the track that I had the least ideas for, and probably ended up in my opinion as my weakest and the piece that was the most simple. I don't think it was my weakest just because it was the simplest of the record sleeves I created, however it wasn't my usual style so on one hand I wasn't used to working in this way and the design possibly suffered because of this. Alternatively, I got to work in a different way than usual and through this learnt something about the types of designs that were possible to make in a simpler, less detailed way.

Similar to when thinking about my first design I was trying to find an image that would compliment the title of the track but also perhaps have an element of story within it. I like the idea of the cover of a record sleeve being a little more than just simply an visual representation of the title track, and so I had the idea to produce a storyboard on the cover telling a story. At this stage I was unsure exactly how to do this, I decided I could either do a two or three scene storyboard illustrating a story or the idea of a story, open to an audience's interpretation or do very small panels and tell a longer story, in this instance the record sleeve would have to be picked up and examined in order to read the full story through the use of panels. This could become an interesting and fun idea for the record sleeve image. The reason I chose to do go with the story idea on this particular piece is that the title of the track, 'Worry' in my opinion is open to this kind of narrative driven interpretation and visual execution. I started sketching ideas, and at this stage I thought it would be more dramatic to have a black background with white illustrations or silhouettes on top of this. I started with two panels, both with a boarder and one on top of the other. Telling this kind of two part story appealed to me for its concise and to the point storytelling, but it also has room for interpretation from the audience. The first image I thought of creating was an open hand, as if to be 'giving someone a helping hand' or equally, being there for someone else. Using this motif I decided the second part of the story excerpt could be two hands coming together, as if someone is being comforted. Ultimately a child's hand seemed to fit quite well and this that's how the illustration was finished. I played around a lot with some details I could add and sections of colour that could be added. But I think with this image in particular, the simpler it was the more effective it felt. I did make a minor adjustment to the background, changing it from black to a more natural, beige colour - which I thought fitted better. This image in contrast to the first image I had made, was created using a mixture of traditional and digital media. Specifically, all of the assets were made using paper cut outs, and marker for the background - the image was simply retouched and cleaned up using Photoshop. Like all of the illustrations I planned to create for this brief, I wanted them to give off an atmosphere and provoke some kind of emotional responsive from the audience in some form. I think this kind of image has a theme that a lot of people can relate to so hopefully it will work as intended in this respect. Overall I liked this image, it wasn't the kind of work I usually produce and it definitely took some will power to leave it as simple as it was without going back and working into it further, but I think the simplicity is what makes this image what it is. This is what I liked about the design, and in a way I hardly recognise it as my own which is interesting but also has proven to me in a small sense that I have been able to do what I wanted and work in a way and in a style I haven't before.

Jack Garrett - Worry

OUAN503 - Secret 7" - Chvrches, Clearest Blue

Clearest Blue by Chvrches was the first track listed on the track list of the Secret 7" site. It made sense that I attempted this one first because of this, combined with the relatively open nature of the title. Furthermore this was one of the only tracks that I had previously heard of, unlike a couple of the others on the list. The first step for anything like this for me is writing down all the ideas that come to mind to see if anything that I think up could work in the context of the brief. For this, I was trying to think up of words, phrases, and imagery that could be associated or interpreted in conjunction with the track title; 'Clearest Blue'. I was trying to be careful however, I knew that I didn't want to be too literal with the artwork and just illustrate the title of the track, similar to other record sleeves I looked at, a lot of the time they were associated with lyrics or the bands imagery as a whole, which I find much more interesting and engaging than simply creating an image to accompany the title of the track.

Like I previously mentioned, my main focus with this brief in particular was to experiment with illustration and seize the opportunity to explore new ways of working in 2D, or even revisiting traditional methods that I haven't had been able to use as frequently in the past few months. As this was my first sleeve out of the seven that I was planning on doing I wanted to start with something I was a little more comfortable and refined on doing so I chose to produce this one digitally in Photoshop using a mixture of textures, paintbrushes and if it needed photographs in order to photo bash certain objects, colours, shapes or textures. This was subject to the type of scene I was creating though, and I hadn't nailed down anything in particular at this stage that I wanted to do. To counter the creative block in terms of ideas I decided to just get something down on the canvas regardless of it being relevant or the route I wanted to take. The chances are based on my past experience that it would develop into a worthy idea that I could then take forward. Whilst I was working and choosing colours I had the works Clearest Blue in my head, and tried to not stray too far from this when working. One of my favourite types of natural lighting is the kind of haziness that can be seen over a city either early in the morning or as the sun is setting, essentially when the sun is low in the sky and the tall buildings and blocking some of the light. I suppose I'm ultimately describing golden hour with an added element of fog. But as I started to work on colours and produce lines on the canvas that resembled contrails, it's this time of day that I was reminded of. I wanted the design to be simple, easy to read and atmospheric. I spent some time experimenting with shapes and skylines as well blending modes on the different layers when layering whole layers of colours and painted lines to achieve a certain level of depth and the correct lighting that I had in mind. I thought quite a lot about type of composition I was creating and how to convey this type of lighting, potentially through buildings from street level or even from the top of a building amongst the city. Ultimately, I wanted the sky to be the focus of the image so I chose to make that take up the majority of the canvas. The things that I liked about this design when I had finished was the choice of colours in the sky, combined with the clouds and the refraction of sun through them giving quite an atmospheric feel overall. There are certain elements I definitely feel like could have been stronger however. Looking back, there could have been a little more detail put into the image, as there seems to be a contrast between the semi realistic sky and the lack of detail in the foreground buildings, which let the image down slightly I think. Thinking about the concept and idea behind the image I do feel like there was a lot more that could have been done with this particular track, but with the amount of different designs that could have been used for this brief it's easy to say what could have been produced. I also learnt a little about colours and the differences between CMYK and RGB. I spoke to Mike about converting the RGB image into CMYK as this was a requirement of the brief but I had only realised after I had nearly finished. We spoke about the different and that unfortunately due to CMYK containing about 4 million colours and RBG containing about 16 million there was going to be some loss of colour when converting to CMYK. I went and spoke to James in the digital printing room and he informed me that when converting to CMYK from RBG to do it through the 'convert to profile' function in Photoshop rather than converting directly to CMYK. I did this, and luckily there was hardly any noticeable difference between the two, so I learnt the importance of producing work in the correct colour mode for a brief through this accident, which I was lucky enough to be able to rectify.

In summary I liked the image I made for this track under the Secret 7" brief, however I think given more time and due to my inexperience tackling briefs I may have played it quite safe when it came down to the idea and the production of the image. I will try to make sure that I experiment further with other images to make sure that I'm using the 2D format to its maximum potential and hopefully learning about how to work in this way too.

Chvrches - Clearest Blue

OUAN503 - Secret 7"

I think I spent more time than I should have considering what would be a good brief to select in order to satisfy the requirement for a substantial brief in the responsive module. After a lot was said regarding the 'Secret 7"' brief I decided to have a look into it further and see what it was about. I had spent a little bit of time looking at it for the studio brief; 'What's the problem?' where I simply looked over the brief in order to see what it entailed and also look at whether or not the brief as a whole was suitable to pursue under the guidelines of the module. As I mentioned in my research for different briefs the Secret 7” brief essentially takes 7 tracks from 7 better known musicians, all from different genres and decades and then presses each one 100 times to 7” vinyl. After revisiting the list of tracks they release I realised that I'm quite familiar with the majority of the artists on the list. In order to make it a substantial brief I'm going to look into doing at least five of the vinyl's with an aim to do them all, in a way to complete a set of seven for the brief, and ultimately to make the brief as substantial as possible. However, due to the way I work and the bits of research and planning that each design will undergo I think five is a more acceptable and realistic aim, it would be nice to be able to do all seven of the tracks though. As they are square in dimensions, I'll have to think carefully about the composition of the images and what will work well with this ratio and size. Specifically the dimensions are 184mm by 184mm with a bleed of 3mm all the way around, making each side 190mm in total. The bleed actually isn't visible on the vinyl if it gets selected and printed so I think that's quite important to bear in mind. I've already spent some time thinking about the possibilities of different mediums and approaches that could be taken and used to create the designs in their final form, and although it's still in the early stages of the brief so far, I think that there are two options. Either, I create a set of vinyl's using a certain type of technique or process, or, alternatively I simply create individual designs separate from one another using a technique that I think will work best or is most suitable. I have to say at this stage the idea of create a set of work, is really appealing and it means I will hopefully get to grips will say for example a printing process quite well by the end of the brief. However, I'm not sure if that will be as successful as branching out and thinking more selectively about the designs and the process behind an individual piece, in order to hopefully create some really nice stand alone work. Having looked at some of the previous pieces people have created online, it made me realise how each one doesn't have to be a really intricate piece of art, but it's sometimes the case that the message and the meaning behind the work is just as if not more valuable. Some of the work I saw was incredibly simple, but because of how clever the design was it really stood out. Hopefully I'll be able to incorporate this level of thought and an element of intelligent design into some of my entries.

The first step for me after revisiting the track listing, is a mixture of research and brainstorming into possible ideas for the separate designs. The method I ended up using was just approaching the record sleeves on an individual basis, one at a time and not letting various designs and ideas overlap. So rather, I was approaching individual record sleeves as individual tasks. I think in reflection, this approach really allowed me to experiment with different media and approaches to the design process, making it so I ended up with completely different designs rather than a collection - which is what I wanted. As a predominantly illustration and graphic design based task due to the nature of record sleeves, I found that this was exactly the opportunity I had been hoping for with the responsive module. I essentially set out to make sure that I utilised the freedom and opportunities that the module presented. By this I mean that I can stray from the kind of briefs and tasks that I would normally be undertaking on the animation degree course and sample new things that I may be able to bring into my practice in future based on how successful they are. Although at this early stage in the brief I wasn't exactly sure on what my different designs and approaches to briefs would be, I knew that I wanted to experiment with various digital methods, perhaps using new software, as well as photography and illustration, or a combination of the two. As a bi-product of this I wanted to expand my understanding and proficiency in creating compositions and generating atmospheric illustrations based on the audiences perspective into the illustration and the way the story is being told within the image. This relates heavily to the kind of importance I'm placing into composition, perspective, storytelling and a whole range of techniques that I try to implement when creating an animation or film live footage, and the way the information is relayed to an audience or observer. Aside from the technical side of this brief and the design processes it remained a competition, and therefore was a big opportunity. Each of the seven sleeves has one hundred designs pressed for it, and although the people who run the secret 7" competition invite hundreds of artists to participate, there is still a lot of opportunity for people like me who will enter to win a place in the exhibition and get their work seen, so it's quite exciting form that point of view.